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WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

CB 1062

ONE BROOKINGS DR.

ST. LOUIS, MO 63130-4899

​Professor Watt specializes in Japanese history. In a current book project, she seeks to gain a better understanding of the Allied-managed population transfers throughout East Asia at the end of the World War II.

"Tôhoku Dôhô: Haisengo Manshû ni okeru Nihonjin no sekai (The World of Japanese Refugees in Postwar Manchuria)." Higashi Ajia Kindaishi March 2003, 87-97

Book Projects

The Allies and the Decolonization of the Japanese Empire seeks to gain a better understanding of the Allied-managed population transfers throughout East Asia at the end of the war, from the level of policy formulation in Washington to how displaced East Asians experienced the implementation of those policies on the ground.

The 'Ordinary Men' of Japan: the Takada 58th Infantry Regiment is a social history of a particular regiment of men, from their mobilization in Niigata in 1937 through the years of waging war in central China to defeat in Burma, and for survivors, across their postwar lives. This research seeks to understand how the men made sense of their histories as part of a larger effort in understanding the ramifications of Japan's war on China, 1937-1945

in the news:

When Empire Comes Home

By Lori Watt

Following the end of World War II in Asia, the Allied powers repatriated over six million Japanese nationals from colonies and battlefields throughout Asia and deported more than a million colonial subjects from Japan to their countries of origin. Lori Watt analyzes how the human remnants of empire, those who were moved and those who were left behind, served as sites of negotiation in the process of the jettisoning of the colonial project and in the creation of new national identities in Japan. Through an exploration of the creation and uses of the figure of the repatriate, in political, social, and cultural realms, this study addresses the question of what happens when empire comes home.